Recent surveys measuring
public opinion and confidence in congress all arrived at the same conclusion:
over seventy percent of Americans have lost faith and confidence in the United
States Congress. The public no longer trusts this body of politicians who were
elected to represent the people and the peoples’ interests. Instead, they now
view these “representatives” as servants of special interest groups, corporations
and high-powered lobbyists. Americans are tired of watching and listening to
elected officials who refrain from taking a strong stand on crucial issues, and
who almost never state their positions with conviction and sincerity. In the
eyes of the nation these senators and representatives are nothing more than
programmed publicity puppets, competing for face time in the media. Common
adjectives used by our citizens to describe these officials clearly reflect
their sentiments: “spineless,” “phony,” “corrupt,” “out of touch,” “timid,”
“all show and no substance,” and the list goes on. Why have we Americans lost
confidence and faith in those elected? Where and when did we go wrong; or
perhaps more correctly, they go wrong? What have these representatives done, or,
failed to do, that arouses such anger and loathing in the very same
constituents who voted them into office?

Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton is a perfect example; an elected senator who has served six years in
her seat, never taking a strong stand in support of her constituents on any
serious or controversial issue; a senator who has used her record-breaking TV
public appearances to say “nothing”; a senator whose senate office adheres
strictly to a motto of “See no Evil, Hear no Evil”; an elected official who has
no record of conducting investigations into cases that are matters of great
concern to her constituents and to our nation; a senator who has consistently
stood quietly on the sidelines when the issues at hand demand public hearings
–waiting to determine the direction of each blowing wind; a politician who has
spent all her focus and energy on a campaign of shallow publicity glitz and her
PR empire behind it. Here are some documented illustrative examples:

James J. DiGeorgio and Carl
Steubing died in ways no war veteran should. They were subjected to illegal
drug experimentation by employees of the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical
Center in Albany, New York; killed by servants of the very government they
fought to protect. Scores of other veterans were injured in these experiments,
and only by the courage of whistleblowers Jeffrey Fudin and Anthony Mariano was
any measure of justice achieved for these misdeeds. One person was convicted of
manslaughter, but investigations into other officials collapsed because of a
lack of institutional nerve to follow the investigation to the end. A
scape-goated employee went to prison, while those who supervised, facilitated,
and reaped the benefits of the lucrative, illegal drug testing went on to other
VA positions with promotions and raises.

Between 2000 and June 2006,
numerous contacts with Senator Hillary Clinton over the Stratton tragedy went
unacknowledged, or glossed over, or shuffled around to various offices with no
substantive action. No less than five Clinton staff members heard presentations
and received documentation about the experiments, and Senator Clinton herself
is personally aware of the detailed facts of the case. This personal knowledge
did not translate into action, for though Senator Clinton carefully scripts her
numerous public appearances to give the impression of caring and concern, her
actions speak otherwise. She noted "our nation made a pact with those who
serve their country in the Armed Forces – a commitment that those who served
would have access to quality health care through the VA hospital system . . .
and they deserve to be treated as the best." But while Senator Clinton was
issuing such lofty statements and mugging for photo opportunities with active
duty military, she did nothing about the systematic abuse and murder of
veterans within her own constituency. The Veterans Affairs Whistleblowers
Coalition, and more recently the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition,
sent numerous letters and e-mails and copious documentation, pleading for help
from the Senator to investigate and address the crimes committed at Stratton,
including unrelenting retaliation against the whistleblowers who brought these
matters to public attention

Notably, the VAWBC
recognized that the motivations and incentives that led to abuse at Stratton
were present at many hospitals throughout the VA system, and that greed and
poor management in the VA guaranteed that the events of Stratton would be
repeated elsewhere. The most vulnerable people, the sick and dying with nowhere
to turn but to the VA, were exploited and killed by those tasked with their
medical care, and their suffering and death were ignored by Senator Clinton. It
is doubly offensive that this woman sits on the Armed Services Committee, which,
along with the Veterans Affairs Committee, has the duty to provide for the
well-being of current and former military service members. For all her
posturing; for a senator who advertises herself as a hawk and pro military; how
does she show it in action? By abandoning our veterans and war heroes in need!

Senator Clinton’s failure
concerning Stratton is not an isolated event; it is part of a pattern of
studious avoidance of principled action in the face of serious government
misconduct, and the refusal to come to the aid of those people who expose that
misconduct. When Bunnatine Greenhouse exposed extraordinary graft and
impropriety in government contracting with Halliburton, when Sergeant Samuel
Provance reported prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib, when Russ Tice
disclosed violations of the Constitution by the National Security Agency, and
when Jay Stroup, Thomas Bittler, Jim Griffin, and Ray Guagliardi exposed
serious defects and negligence in the Transportation Security Administration
that puts travelers at risk, Clinton did nothing. No words of support, no calls
for investigations, no efforts to prevent the lives and careers of
whistleblowers from being destroyed. Documents on numerous cases were shared
with her office, offers to brief her and her staff have been made on many
occasions, pleas for her to live up to the words she so casually utters, have
all been ignored, or even ridiculed.

In her six years as senator
she has done nothing but attempt to position herself for the presidency, done
nothing but avoid acting out of principle and justice, done everything to
offend no one. We respect our opponents in much greater measure than we respect
Senator Clinton, for with our opponents at least the fight is joined; at least
they have the courage of their convictions, at least they place their bets in
public. But Senator Clinton, by trying to be something to everyone ends up
being nothing to anyone. Where she cannot act safely, she does not act. The
current times call for politicians to act with conviction and intelligence, not
with cynical, calculated action in response to what opinion polls indicate. If
Senator Clinton cannot even come to the aid of constituent veterans being
killed through grotesquely immoral and illegal medical experimentation, if she
cannot commit herself to call for investigations of national security
vulnerabilities that risk national catastrophe, if she cannot offer even moral
support to those who disclose outrageous government incompetence and
impropriety, is there anything that would prompt her to take a stance out of
conviction? Such a person has no business representing the people of this
country.Nothing stirs her soul except
for her own selfish ambitions; ambitions that she places in front of the
nation’s welfare.

Two weeks from today, New
Yorkers will cast their vote to determine their upcoming democratic candidate.
We hope that they will ask themselves a few hard questions and consider their
answers before they cast their vital votes. Are they among those who are tired and
disgusted with the current Congress, which has abdicated its duty and
responsibility to the public at large? Are they going to have “needed change
and reform” in mind when voting for their next candidate? Will they vote for
someone with an established record of failure? Or will they take a chance on
new blood? Are they going to take into consideration this incumbent’s misuse of
“national security and terrorism”? Will they reflect on her failures when
presented with real issues threatening our security - brought to her by those
on the front lines? Will they consider having raised more money than any other
democratic candidate a plus or a minus - questioning all she had to promise and
everyone she had to sell out in order to raise those millions? Will they simply
ask, isn’t six years long enough? Isn’t it time for a change? Isn’t it time to
give another democrat the opportunity to step up and become what we all long
for – a true representative of the people?

We have confidence in the
sophistication of our New Yorkers. We believe they’ll say: “Ms. Clinton, fool
us once, shame on you; fool us twice shame on us.”

Sibel Edmonds is the founder and
director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language
specialist for the FBI.During her work
with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches,
cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security
implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was
retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that
time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of
“State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and
prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification
by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and
Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from
George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from
George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006
PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.

Professor William Weaver is the
senior advisor and a board member of National Security Whistleblowers
Coalition. Mr. Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years
in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany, in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently
received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia,
where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently
an Associate Professor of political science and an Associate in the Center for
Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in
executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy.
His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political
Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics,
Organization and other journals. With co-author Robert Pallitto, his book
Presidential Secrecy and the Law is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University
Press in the spring of 2007. His views and positions arising from his
affiliation with the NSWBC do not reflect the sentiments of, or constitute and
endorsement by, the University of Texas at El Paso.